Home   Bury St Edmunds   News   Article

Subscribe Now

Bury St Edmunds wins nearly £100,000 towards abbey celebrations including spectacle of light, exhibitions and historic gathering of monks and nuns




Bury St Edmunds has been awarded nearly £100,000 to celebrate the millennium of the town’s former abbey which will include a spectacle of light, exhibitions and a gathering of monks and nuns for the first time in 500 years.

The £99,200 grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund will support events, postponed from last year to 2022, designed to involve residents in telling the story of the town’s patron saint St Edmund as well as the foundation of the abbey and its relationship with the town.

Libby Ranzetta, chair of the Abbey 1000 Group, said the £208,950 project will ‘bring to life the history and human stories connected with the once all-powerful abbey’.

Matthew Vernon, Melanie Lesser, chair of Bury St Edmunds and Beyond and Martyn Taylor, chair of Bury Society at the Abbey of St Edmund 1000 relaunch last November. Picture: Sue Warren
Matthew Vernon, Melanie Lesser, chair of Bury St Edmunds and Beyond and Martyn Taylor, chair of Bury Society at the Abbey of St Edmund 1000 relaunch last November. Picture: Sue Warren

The grant will support nine events one of which will see 100 Benedictine monks and nuns from communities across Britain, and possibly abroad, gather in Bury St Edmunds for the first time in 500 years since the dissolution of the monasteries. They will be joined on May 14-15 by 400 other people and Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, who will also be attending.

An exhibition of seven Abbey manuscripts will be held in the cathedral treasury from May 2 to June 9, which will be the first time the manuscripts are reunited in their place of origin since 1539.

From May to November, a monthly changing display of sculptures will be installed in the crypt within the abbey ruins, where the shrine of St Edmund would have stood, starting with a giant steel monk.

Kevin Baldwin, of Designs on Metal, with the monk
Kevin Baldwin, of Designs on Metal, with the monk

An exhibition of new and original stained glass and original pilgrims’ badges at Moyse’s Hall Museum will run from July 1 to September 30.

A ‘Celebrations for All’ community picnic will be in the Abbey Gardens on July 16. A travelling exhibition, explaining the heritage of the abbey, will tour heritage attractions, cultural venues, schools, West Suffolk College and the town centre.

A St Edmunds’ Day Spectacle of Light, from November 17 to 20, will project images of manuscripts from the abbey onto historic buildings and there will be a light trail through the abbey ruins in partnership with West Suffolk College.

A St Edmund lecture is on November 19.

Abbey of St Edmund crypt. Picture: Sue Warren
Abbey of St Edmund crypt. Picture: Sue Warren

The project has been backed with £109,750 match funding from local organisations.

Ms Ranzetta said: “The programme is still growing and we would welcome ideas from groups and organisations. It will be some while before we get this opportunity again after all.”

The Abbey of St Edmund ruins. Picture: Shawn Pearce
The Abbey of St Edmund ruins. Picture: Shawn Pearce

Other events planned for the Abbey of St Edmund 1000 celebrations include:

Today until Sunday: A 7ft 6ins tall monk sculpture will be on display in the Abbey Gardens to celebrate St Edmund’s Day (tomorrow) and to promote the Abbey 1000 celebrations.

Tomorrow: To celebrate the feast of St Edmund and as a start to the Abbey 1000 celebrations a service will be held at St Edmund’s Catholic Church.

From April: Bury St Edmunds Town Guides’ season of daily town walks runs from April to October alongside tours focusing on various aspects of the abbey and St Edmund.

May 21 to November 20: Our Bury St Edmunds BID and historian and author Martyn Taylor have created a brand new Abbey 1000 Heritage Trail around the town centre for 2022.

May: A group of walkers will be making a pilgrimage from St Benet’s, Norfolk to Bury St Edmunds arriving on May 14. Another pilgrimage group will walk from Ely to Bury in the spring to mark this historic anniversary.

May 20 to 21: Bury Water Meadows Group will invite nature lovers and budding ecologists to join in a hunt for as many species of plant, insect and animal that can be found in the abbey precinct.

May 28: The Suffolk Philharmonic, Suffolk’s professional orchestra, will present the Abbey 1000 Concert; Elgar’s Enigma Variations, including the best-known ‘Nimrod’, will be played as well as new work specially commissioned for Abbey 1000, Into The Light by composer Paul Carr.

June 20 to 29: Flower exhibition at the cathedral.

June 29: A schools celebration event with performances and a historical themed parade.

June 26: Churches Together Summer Celebration

Meanwhile, a fly through video of the Abbey of St Edmund ruins showing how the great Abbey Church and the Shrine of St Edmund would have looked during its heyday is being produced using cutting edge CGI as part of the marketing for the celebratory year.

A new visitor leaflet and map for the Abbey of St Edmund and an enlarged version of the map of the ruins for the Abbey Gardens is being produced by the Abbey of St Edmund Heritage Partnership.

Greene King Brewery will be celebrating the milestone with Abbey 1000 activity around its famous Bury St Edmunds brewed beer ‘Abbot Ale’.

The Old Cannon Brewery, in Bury St Edmunds, is producing a special commemorative beer to celebrate 1000 years since the abbey’s founding.

Read more: All the latest news from Suffolk

Read more: All the latest news from Bury St Edmunds



Comments | 0